Are Your Web Pages Doing Their Job?

Content & Article Writing

When you build Web pages for your content site, there are two audiences to please - human visitors and the Search Engine spider bots. The goal is to best meet both of their expectations and to also get your "most wanted response"...

1) For your human readers, make your copy sufficiently compelling to get the click directly to your income source, or as a second choice to a related content page.

2) For your spider readers, work your specific keyword or topic for your site's theme (and general related keywords and common synonyms) throughout your page so that the Search Engines rank it highly in their search results. And where applicable, provide clean, visible links to your related content pages on your site. This helps spiders to "click through," scan and then bring info back to their Search Engines' databases.

"On-page criteria" are the key points that the engines need in order to know what the page is about and how to rank it (in comparison to other pages on the Net about the same topic). We'll discuss 3 points on the criteria list in this article...

1) Keyword Density

Focus on one "specific keyword" per page. Use it slightly more than your high school English teacher taught was "good English." Blend in general keywords, word combos (specific keyword + general keyword), and also use synonyms and variations, where applicable. This approach will help you achieve the correct "keyword density."

2) Keyword Prominence

Make it a point to use your specific keyword more heavily in the opening paragraph or two (it should be in your opening sentence), and also in the closing paragraph. And then, like a good chef, sprinkle throughout! Your "scatter pattern" should look like an hourglass... bigger (i.e., more frequent) on the top and bottom, and less (but still present) in the middle of the page. This sets up the correct "keyword prominence" for your page.

3) Word Count

A common question from new page-builders is about the best word count for a page.

There is no absolute number. As always, your brain comes first. There may be perfectly valid reasons to have a shorter page (ex., 150 words).

The answer to the age-old question of "how long should a web page be" is answered by an even older question...

How long should a piece of string be?

The answer is... "as long as it needs to be to get the job done, and no longer."

If you can write a great page with 150 words that covers a very narrow topic well, that's fine. Just don't make it a habit, however. In these post-Panda days, it's better to be more conservative.

The general recommendation is an average of 400 words.

If you find yourself reverting back to the high school practice of adding "filler" words just to make the number, you likely don't need more. When you write more content... make it great, high-value material. Keep it real.

Additional Tips

1) Should you find yourself with a shorter page, it might be a good idea to reduce the number of AdSense ads on the page. If you find a short page looks "ad-heavy," cut back your lowest-paying ads.

2) Remember, not every page must have ads. Low-traffic, low-keyword-value pages, and pages that "don't pay" when you run your Google AdSense Report, can be cut back or cut out of ads.

3) As the Search Engines become smarter, some on-page criteria aren't as important as they were. The following, however, remain essential...

• Use your specific keyword for topical pages in the Title and Description of your page.
• The specific keyword should still appear in the file name and in the headline because these help the Search Engines determine what your page is about.
• Sprinkle the specific keyword in the main body copy of the page itself.

On the other hand, having your keyword in the first 90 characters of text isn't essential for a good ranking. And having the keyword present an exact number of times on the page isn't as important.

4) Don't jump linguistic hoops to "make it right" if the content of the page would become awkward. For these types of on-page criteria, your human visitor is more important! However, do adjust your wording if you forgot to use the page's specific keyword at all in the body copy or if you used it too many times ("keyword stuffing").

For more tips and advance about page creation within your content blueprint, watch this short SiteSell video...